Bitter
by Cail M
Summary: Percy Weasley tells Oliver Wood the big news at the wrong time.


  
  
Rated: R for language and an implied past romantic(?)/sexual relationship between two guys.  
Warning: Oliver, who tells this story from his point of biew curses a lot (and I do mean a lot) and seems very frustrated and I don't like to call it angst but... he's frustrated, very. Anyway. Here goes. My first one. Fingers crossed. --This was, in the beginning, inspired in part by a song Adrianne sings, Destiny. ('Screw you and your destiny.') The rest of it comes from my own fevered brain/this weird Oliver-voice in my head who possessed and made me write most of this. Many thanks to Katie, who edited this and helped me with Oliver's schizoid pronouns in different parts of the story.  
New Note: Recently looked at my reviews. Yes, over half of them mention the expletives used in the story, saying that they are in excess. So I went back to read my story again and I edited it a little, all for the better I hope. I don't think I took out any of the expletives though.  
  
Attack of the commas and the word fuck! Aaaaaah, turn back while there is still time!  
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**Bitter**  
  
  
_Fuck. Who is she? What does she think she's doing?! What's she doing sleeping in his bed? What's she doing dancing in his head?_  
  
The view is beautiful; the view has everything going for it. I can't say the same for my mood or present company or even this stone gazebo place, the stone scratches where I press my palms. But there are Dramatic Grey Rocks, Rushing River Turned To Spun Gold In The Sunlight and the whole primeval forest going on across the river. Honey, I think we passed the waterfall about a mile back, should we go back? I'm sure the view is simple glorious! Coo.  
  
This is a very strange place to be now, tonight, but I have to be here. I am out of my mind right now with this strange hurting and so he dragged me here to cure me of this ailment, this true grief. A view of a crashing waterfall should cure me. Pull the other one.  
  
Something is seriously screwed with the time here. The brochure says there's a magnetic force here that works to draw in all the magic around it, or too many major time-spells have been cast here, or it's some fruitacular Center O' Magic. I don't know what is true and what is limp brochure lovelyjubbly trumped-up horseshit. I can probably safely assume that all of it is horseshit, the slickest out-of-date pamphlet kind.   
  
But that's what it said, and it gave me a headache trying to think it into some kind of sense, so I just pretended it wasn't affecting me. Like someone really loyal to their favorite team to the very end, crossing their fingers and pretending that yeah, they're all right, they're not tail-spinning miserably and having the worst season of their life.  
  
It all comes back to Quidditch doesn't it? Even the fucking similes. Okay, all right fine I'm here because I bruised my ego after it was all polished and ready to suck up to the papers and have it's picture taken. I fucked myself up royally. I just wanted to be good, really really wildly amazingly good. O wanted so bad to be /so/ good.  
  
Now--now I'm not really listening and I'm not really watching but he seems to be saying something I should hear. He--the Weasley.  
  
Oh, wrong name! What a stupid name to bring up on a night like this. Penelope Clearwater, this first evening. How am I supposed to handle this?  
  
Wait--oh. Does he think he's being good? I guess... sincere and upfront and I don't know why he fucking bothered, I'll be angry at him any way he tells me news like that. Shit, like /that/.  
  
Penelope Clearwater.  
  
The way this conversation changed it turned and spun fast like Viktor Krum's feint over the Quidditch green. It makes my head spin, thinking about it over again. What he just said.  
  
Gooseprickles, not the good kind, ah, those hands down my back. I missed--I still miss /those/ hands, those hands. What is he doing. No. Percy?.... It goes through my head like some awful loud hornet intent on stinging me as much as it can before it flies out the other ear and to the safety of the sky.  
  
"Percy?" Is he all right in there, is he going crazy, am I?--what the hell what the fuck does he think he's doing?  
  
"We... we thought about it for a long time and I think I'd like to spend my whole life with her."  
  
Shivers. "Without sex?" What a bravely stupid way of putting it. I think I must look funny, must look funny because /he's/ looking at me like I'm looking at him funny. I don't usually believe in such jealousy as this but this-is.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"What I say." What a nasty tone to say it in, myvoice makes me the snottiest little disgrace under the sky, I know this, I don't stop myself.  
  
We both keep swallowing and licking our lips, sitting in the sun just getting bleached out. I guess I needed to help him find closure; now he can go get married and be a straight fucker for all of eternity. Have a family and make babies. What a paragon of heterosexual sentiment, 'let's get married and have babies.'   
  
Go on, "grow up", get married, go have disturbing attractions to forever untouchable men--god damn him, why did he have to ask me what I meant? Now I feel guilty. Almost.  
  
The view is changing into something full of peach and coral--sunset.  
  
"Somebody.. talk to you about it, Percy?" I sigh, an untruthful sounding wheeze. "It doesn't work, it never works. I had a girlfriend last year." My eyes are wider than I want them to be, but it's not like they're full of the Tears o' Regret or anything, they're full of this bitterness that needs to be stared out in dagger form. "Yes, I know, hard to believe, lovely bit of fluff hanging on my arm, all the proper bits and pieces attached to /her/ allright, but none of the feeling in me."  
  
These eyes want something out of him-my eyes do. I keep trying to remember what the fuck it was I wanted from him to begin with, and I can't find it anywhere, I left this reason somewhere, I abandoned my reason a long time ago, was it that funny crease in the corner of his mouth, the way his hair fell, or the way he held himself? What bewitching part of him was the fucking lure? None of it that I can see anymore as one single thing, it's all there, the glint of sunlight in his glasses giving him glass bug eyes and the fussy way he keeps inspecting his fingernails, oh heaven forbid he track dust in on his shoes. His vanities, those are what I miss most, his idiotic pride.  
  
He looks more and more and more and more confused and I can't help myself, I just keep going after him, stirring him up into a sticky color-swirled aura that doesn't understand any of what I'm saying. It's not so hard, I don't even know what I'm talking about.  
  
"Did someone convince you to be Otherwise Than What You Are?" It sounds important when I say it like that, just as I mean it to sound, high and mighty, what a king I'd make. He blinks and frowns, "Don't be so prim."  
  
I don't say 'Oh, speak for yourself. What've you got stuck up your ass /these/ days?' Because it's not me, not me...  
  
He used to warn me to be sweet and romantic, said I was so crass. But I like sex and he likes 'making love' because that's how he fucking is, so romantic and helpless and pointless. So /why/ am I still sitting here waiting for the sun to set?! Wait-okay, very funny, very ironic, I do see that it's rising. Oh, the colors of a sunrise after the blue of evening and no night.  
  
"What do you want me to tell you, to explain? Some people... I mean /I/... well, we love each other."  
  
Something in me chimes with a nice note of certainty, I'm right and I know it like my own name. "Ooooh, yes, fine, 'love' each other all you want but do you desire her at /all/? Percival," snark, "it's platonic." He looks almost shocked, like I just poked him in the eye instead of telling him something that he should already know.   
  
Percy Weasley and Penelope Clearwater Love Each Other. Yeah right. Nobody writes about that kind of love because it is /boring/! Doesn't he know that? Yeah, look at him, he knows that.  
  
"I don't care. It's seemly."  
  
"Percy?" Oh…  
  
He tucks his hands across his stomach, slipping them down until his fingers lie against the tops of his legs. Damn him and his fucking unintentional allure, why does he--how can he still do this to me?!   
  
The way he holds himself stiff and serious like that and then spreads his legs like--what was I going to say? Shut me up. What does he want anyway? Oh, yeah, my apology for seducing him when he was a prefect? Fuck that. It was mutual desire gobbling. Does he want my blessing or my forgiveness or my understanding and if I give him 'understanding' what does /that/ mean? I can't say 'I /do/ understand that you're getting married to a boring girl who can stand behind you on a podium and wave at people and flutter her blue eyelashes and she's not stupid but you like her as a friend and maybe just possibly love her like you love Ginny, even when she irritates you because sisters do that sometimes and it's par for the course, but... what can I say?' So I say the next worst thing.  
  
"I should probably go back. Gotta check out my room, unpack and set things up." What kind of ugly look should I give him to squish his heart after that? "I'm tired." That should be enough.  
  
This look of sweet desperation walks across his face and I can't stand it, I don't even stand up all the way, fuck me and my inability to be harsh and vicious--no, wait, fuck /him/ and his sweet hurt looks and his red hair and his freckles and his... red hair all over his fucking body. I've thought about that. That whole family with red hairs in places I don't need to think about. Hah! Glad I never cleaned their drain; that's got to be horrifying. I think too much about this, oh, yeah, as if I miss this thing. Right, I miss this guy being mine. I keep forgetting.  
  
The scene doesn't see fit to change so I float my eyes up to see the sky; nothing to see there, not even a bird in the damn firmament. I can almost tell him what I'm thinking. 'Oh, don't look so pensive Perce, you idiot, you're see-through when you want to say something, just fucking say it get the damn thing over with.' I won't tell him that, he has this hesitant look--Oh, don't look at him Oliver, just don't look.  
  
He turns to me and he spits it out like he knows he should have said it earlier--which he /should/ have but he had to find the right time and then let it slip by and then say it at the utterly wrong time. "Um. I--I'm very sorry about your injury."  
  
I hate people calling it that above all else. 'Injury'. It doesn't make me an invalid, it doesn't cripple me for life, I can still fly and injury seems to imply accident. It's my fault, I wish somebody would blame me. It's my fault, I did it, I screwed up, I was--God, what a fuck up I have been. I wasso cocky in my first game but... well, well... well, these things happen and they're no worse then the mistakes we made when we were children. All the really awful things I did when I was a child, all the insensitive mind fucking things I did then. Take those, mash them all together into one lump and sure, it was /that/ bad and everyone keeps treating me like it was an accident and they're sorry I was unlucky to be under that ladder when it fell.  
  
I cheated and the bludgers knew that they could detect my magic and they came and kicked my ass for it. Knocked me in a tailspin, hit me off and beat me up. Way to go bludgers. I wish someone would remember to blame me sometime. I'm not twelve, I can handle some bitter blame in my general direction now, please.  
  
I feel cold and suddenly it rushes through me so hard that I think I'm blushing all across my cheeks. "Percy Weasley," I must sound as cold as I feel because the look he gives me is more sorrow than any of his words could tell. He is more in sorrow than in anger. Somehow even that doesn't stop me, I go on and on and on and oh, damn me I go on just to fuck with my own head. "It was no worse a mistake than the one I made with you."   
  
'Ooooh, hiss, it wasn't a mistake, what I did with yoooou' the part of me that isn't lying cries out loud and the thousand serpents in my stomach and the one lower hiss in anguish because... it had been right, so completely right and now he's getting married to PENELOPE CLEARWATER?!   
  
"Can't you just see them, happy and old and still virgins to each other, childless and /happy/ with a fancy house and..." oh, a different thought, I know those red ambition buttons. "Even a high Ministry title! Can you imagine? Oh, Percy, is that what you want?!" Don't ask me. I started saying things out loud at some point, not even realizing the anger in my head was spilling across my tongue, sounding hot passion frazzled out of mind and fraying my lips. I wish I could flay him alive for that pitiful look he just held out for me, that pitiful apologetic look.  
  
"Sorry, Oliver. But I'm not like that anymore."  
  
Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him fuck him.  
  
  
  
One this is… if he ever runs, I'm voting for him as head of the Ministry of Magic because I know him and he's clever and he'll tell me the whole truth when I don't want it. And just to fuck with myself, Sometimes I swear and there's nothing intelligent in my head except maybe the swears.  
  
I'm too young to be old but that's what I'm feeling. I think I'll forget about it now.  
  
Screw me and my chosen destiny.  
  
  
  



End file.
